After one of his weakest performances in recent years, Grand Slam record champion Roger Federer has surprisingly dropped out in the round of 16 of the US Open. The world number two from Switzerland lost 6:3, 5:7, 6:7 (7:9), 6:7 (3:7) after 3:35 hours against Australian John Millman at no other major tournament since the Australian Open 2015.
Federer made more than 70 avoidable mistakes, especially his serve left the 37-year-old in the lurch. Federer served ten double faults, the rate of the first serve was less than 50 percent. Obviously Federer had problems with the conditions, even in the late evening it was still almost 30 degrees in New York, with an extremely high humidity.
Nevertheless Federer had chances, in the second set he missed two set points on his own serve at 5:4, also in the tiebreak of the third set he was only one point away from winning the set. In the fourth set he lost a break lead.
Millman was the significantly fitter player, at 0.52 local time the 29-year-old converted his third match point and reached the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time in his career.
There the world ranking-55th will meet Wimbledon winner Novak Djokovic (Serbia) on Wednesday, who won 6:3, 6:4, 6:3 against the Portuguese in the afternoon. Djokovic also suffered from the heat, but did not give himself any nudity and later said: “It was more difficult than the final score says. “It was tough conditions, especially in the first two sets.”
Millman said: “I can hardly believe it, Roger is one of my heroes, he certainly didn’t have his best day today, but I’ll take that with me.”
Federer had won the Australian Open at the beginning of the season, his 20th Grand Slam title. He had skipped the clay court season and did not really get going afterwards.
In Wimbledon, Federer missed a 2-0 lead over South African Kevin Anderson in the quarter-finals and had no chance against Djokovic in the Masters final in Cincinnati/Ohio before the US Open.
In 40 previous matches in Flushing Meadows, Federer had never lost to a player placed outside the top 50. From 2004 to 2008 he had won the US Open five times in a row, but since then he has only reached the final once (2015).